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Sports Editor
Doug Flanagan
(509) 661-5202
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Section
B
Thursday, January 29, 2015
NWAC basketball
Knights can’t hold lead, fall in OT
Reserve leads WVC
women to victory
◆
BY DOUG FLANAGAN
World sports editor
WENATCHEE — At this point in
the season, it’s pretty easy to identify
the Wenatchee Valley College men’s
basketball team’s weakness. Not much
advance statistical analysis is required.
In the vast majority of their games,
the Knights have had
leads, most of them by
double digits. And in
most of those contests,
they’ve given up those
advantages, and have
went on to either lose
WVC
the game or scramble
WEDNESDAY
at the end to pull out a
victory.
That scenario
occurred once again Wednesday
at Smith Gymnasium in the team’s
81-79 overtime defeat to Big Bend,
the Knights’ third consecutive loss
after beginning Northwest Athletic
Conference East Region play with three
straight victories.
The Knights have clearly identiﬁed
this as a
PHOTO GALLERY at
problem.
wenatcheeworld.com
So why are
they still
struggling to ﬁnd a solution?
“If we knew, this wouldn’t be
happening,” guard Dylan Boyd said
after the game. “We just have to keep
working to ﬁx the problem.”
WVC coach Coby Weidenbach
echoed those exact thoughts, adding
that his team has a tendency to change
its style of play later in games, and not
for the better.
“We’ve tried different things —
different defenses, different lineups
— and it continues to happen,”
Weidenbach said. “Our theme in
practice last week was ‘We, not me.’ But
we’ve got guys who think they can do
it on their own. (In the second half of
Wednesday’s game), they saw (Vikings
Mogga Lado and Donavin Wright)
get to the rim over and over, and (our
players) think they can do that, too. But
that’s not us. We have to share the ball
and execute our offense.”
To be clear, the Knights still have
“We’re still in the mix. ... We just have to keep our
heads up and keep getting better every day, and
hopefully we’ll do some good things.”
Above: Wenatchee Valley
College’s Easton Driessen
tries to get in the middle of a
play to force a turnover
between Big Bend Community
College’s Donavin Wright, left,
and Wyatt Johnson during
Wednesday’s game in
Wenatchee. Left: WVC didn’t
have an answer for Big Bend’s
Mogga Lado, who got to the
hoop several times, here
against Bryan Michaels.
DYLAN BOYD
Wenatchee Valley College guard
the potential to be a playoff team.
This might be the best WVC team in
several years. The only good thing
about repeatedly losing double-digit
leads is that the team had double-digit
leads in the ﬁrst place. The Knights are
focusing on the positives while trying
to correct their ﬂaws as the ﬁrst half of
region play concludes.
Weidenbach says he believes a 9-5
record can get the team into the
NWAC Tournament. If the Knights
beat Yakima Valley on Saturday, they’ll
need to go 5-2 in the second half of
East play to attain that mark.
“We’re still in the mix,” Boyd said. “I
still think we can ﬁnish strong. We just
have to keep our heads up and keep
Please see KNIGHTS, Page B2
World photos/Don Seabrook
Ridge to River put on shelf for a year
BY STEVE MAHER
AdventureWenatchee.com
World photo/Don Seabrook
Wenatchee’s Chris Jones skates down the ice during a
December game against Wichita.
Wild kick off last Alaskan series
BY MATTHEW OCKINGA
World sports writer
A loss is a loss, right?
Well, going strictly by deﬁnition, that’s
true. But there are some defeats so bitter, so
perturbing, that they stick in the memory
like a small string of celery in the far back
molars, making it difficult to remove and
impossible to forget.
But every year in every sport, a team must
Wild
at Kenai River
Today, 8 p.m.
Radio: KPQ
Please see WILD, Page B2
WENATCHEE — During its heyday,
the Ridge to River Relay’s crème de
la crème was its paddling leg — with
canoeists and kayakers churning away
down the Wenatchee and Columbia
rivers to the ﬁnish line in Riverfront
Park.
Now, in an ironic twist, the sport of
paddling’s rapid growth in the community means the expected rebirth of Ridge
to River will need to be put off for a year,
organizers and supporters say.
Wenatchee Row and Paddle Club,
which has been spearheading efforts to
restart the race, is working on a strategic
plan to redevelop and expand its facility
along the Columbia at the foot of Ninth
Street, and doesn’t have the resources
to pull off Ridge to River this year, said
executive director Skip Johnson.
The club operates two boat houses
and a dock at the site now and is at full
capacity. The expansion project calls
for expansion of the boat house nearest
Walla Walla Street into a learning center
with additional storage for boat, a new
dock for rowing programs and improvements to the boathouse nearest the river.
An early estimate pegged the cost at $1
million. The club announced late last
year that Ridge for Ridge would return
on April 4 after a six-year hiatus. But
“We don’t have the staff or available
manpower to do both at the same time. The
‘Paddler Campus’ has been the club’s key
project for at least two years now.”
SKIP JOHNSON
Executive director, Wenatchee Row and Paddle Club
Johnson informed Wenatchee Chamber
of Commerce officials last week that the
race would not be held this year.
The strategic plan for the paddling and
rowing facility needs to be submitted to
the Chelan County PUD, which oversees
the Columbia River shoreline where the
club complex is slated to be developed,
by March 1.
“We don’t have the staff or available
manpower to do both at the same time,”
Johnson said. “The ‘Paddler Campus’ has
been the club’s key project for at least
two years now. Things are setting up to
make that happen.”
Johnson said the goal is to get the
club’s strategic plan included in the
PUD’s new comprehensive plan and
then to seek funding from the PUD and
others to help pay for the complex. The
club also needs to make presentations
to the Wenatchee City Council and the
Wenatchee Parks Board over the next
month to get their support.
He said the decision to put Ridge to
River on the shelf for a year is a bittersweet one. He said he had received
positive comments from people interested in seeing the race come back.
After a run of 29 years, Ridge to River
was last held in 2009. In the late 1980s
and early 1990s, the event attracted
close to 2,000 athletes annually. But that
number dropped to just over 300 a year
in its ﬁnal two years. Johnson said the
plan now is to hold Ridge to River on
April 2, 2016.
A race organizing committee had
settled on a race course that would have
included a downhill ski leg at Mission
Ridge, a bike ride from Pybus Public
Market to Alcoa and back, two running
legs from Pybus to Lincoln Rock State
Park, and then the ﬁnal leg — a canoe
paddle on the Columbia — from Lincoln
Rock State Park to Pybus.
“We thought it would be a safe and
very doable course,” Johnson said.
THE BOTTOM LINE
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On Jan. 29, 1981,
the American League
approves the sale
of 80 percent of the
Seattle Mariners to
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Steve Schrader of the Detroit Free
Press, after Tiger Woods got a tooth
knocked out at one of his girlfriend’s
World Cup ski races: “Maybe
Lindsey Vonn is a trained assassin,
too.”
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“Dez Wells can score, pass and rebound for a very
underrated Maryland squad. Traveling to Value City Arena in
Columbus will be a big test for the Terrapins, as Ohio State
has just one home loss this season.” — David Heiling
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